The Star Trek franchise has never been about wondering how the intrepid crew of the Starship Enterprise would save the day against impossible odds. Rather, the suspense has always come from the struggle between hope and despair as they have battled aliens, space viruses, and their own inner conflicts to snatch victory from certain doom.… Read More »

CHAPPIE is a cross between Pinicchio and ROBOCOP with a dash of DISTRICT 9. That last is unsurprising because CHAPPIE is the brainchild of Neill Blomkamp, and many of the elements at work in that earlier film about the meaning of humanity are at work in this one. The battleground is still South Africa, Blomkamp’s… Read More »

After being delayed delayed half a year or so, PROJECT ALMANAC (aka WELCOME TO YESTERDAY and ALMANAC) has finally crept onto movie screens only to prove that waiting a year for its release would not have been nearly long enough. The trope of time travel and second chances has never been rendered in a more… Read More »

THE EDGE OF TOMORROW is everything a cracking good action/adventure/sci-fi film should be. Fluidly directed, ferociously acted, and intelligently written, it even takes the time to consider such lofty issues as the ennui of immortality and the nature of reality as it blows up nifty monsters from outer space. Blows them up real good. Its… Read More »

With SUNSHINE, Danny Boyle once again switches film genres with a masterly touch. Having explored gritty realism with TRAINSPOTTING, social satire with SHALLOW GRAVE, whimsical fantasy with MILLIONS, and apocalyptic horror with 28 DAYS LATER, he has moved on to science fiction, albeit science fiction that also functions as a white-knuckle thriller. For all the… Read More »

I am one of those slavish devotees of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhker Trilogy who can, as a result of manic bouts of reading (the books), watching (the BBC television series) and listening (to the original incarnation produced by BBC radio) recite vast swaths of text. It’s a skill that provokes delight in some, consternation in others,… Read More »

Vincenzo Natali’s SPLICE is a dark fantasy about what would happen if maverick scientists decided to flout the rules and insert human DNA into a hybrid creature. The result is terrifyng on both a cerebral and an emotional level, with the complex structure of the human psyche, good and bad, making for the real horror of the… Read More »

Is George Lucas more than just a filmmaker with a franchise worth billions? Is he also that franchise’s #1 Fanboy? It’s one of many intriguing questions in Alexandre Philippe’s documentary about the relationship the fans have with the creator of the Star Wars universe. While Philippe demurred about the exact number of Star Wars action… Read More »

When I spoke with Joseph Gordon-Levitt on September 12, 2012, it wasn’t with his latest film, Rian Johnson’s LOOPER, that I wanted to start. Instead, I was curious about why he had flown to thousands of miles in order to make a cameo of only a few seconds in Johnson’s second film, THE BROTHERS BLOOM. The… Read More »

Some of us have been waiting decades for Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s trilogy to make it to the big screen. That made it hard to maintain anything remotely resembling journalistic detachment when I talked with the one of the film’s executive producers, Robbie Stamp on February 18, 2005 when he was in San Francisco for WonderCon. We… Read More »